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Friday, December 30, 2005

Jonathan Kozol explains life in the 100% fluoridated South Bronx (a NYC
borough) in his book, Savage Inequalities, “Bleeding gums, impacted
teeth and rotting teeth are routine matters for children..... Children
live for months with pain that grown-ups would find unendurable. …I have
seen children with teeth that look like brownish, broken sticks. I have
seen teenagers who were missing half their teeth....”

Almost three fourths of New Yorkers have consumed tap water injected with fluoride for decades. Yet, New York State’s fluoridated counties and cities suffer worse dental health than those without fluoride-laced water supplies.

America’s oral health crisis is not due to lack of fluoride but because poor people can’t get dentists to fix their teeth. In fact, the American Dental Association says, “Low income is the single best predictor of high caries experience in children,” not lack of fluoridation. Low-income populations have the highest levels of dental disease but are least likely to be cared for, according to the General Accounting Office (1).

Despite fluoridation, severe tooth decay is responsible for two thirds of hospital visits by children under six in New York State (2). In New York City, fluoridated since 1965, more children required cavity-related hospitalizations, proportionately, than two of New York State's largest non-fluoridated counties, Suffolk and Nassau (Long island) whether payment was made by Medicaid or privately.(2)

One New York City hospital charged from $900 to $12,000 to treat 96 children with severely decayed teeth, excluding the dentist and anesthesiologist fees. Children needed extensive work including stainless steel crowns, extractions, root canal therapy, fillings, other restorations, periodontal procedures, surgeries and/or more. (2)

NYS hospital costs were between $2.5 and $33 million for the 2,726 childhood cavities-related surgical visits required by children under six, in 1999. (2) Even after hospital treatment, these children return with new lesions.

According to Dr. Jayanth Kumar, Director, Bureau of Dental Health, NYS Department of Health, Tooth decay "is more of a problem in poor children...We have data for New York State where it shows about 32% of poor children actually have oral health problems compared to only about 12% of non‐poor children. So what has happened over the years is tooth decay
was a problem of the rich in the last century and shifted to poor children around 1970s or so, mainly
because of access to refined sugar and processed foods."

Kumar said, "about
4,800 children are taken to operating rooms every year and more children also go to emergency rooms
with dental problems. So we have been tracking these indicators. This is one of the indicators where we
haven't seen improvement. Actually, it went in the opposite direction.We wanted to reduce emergency
department and ambulatory surgery facility visits from 2,900 to about 1,500 over the last
decade. Instead of that, it actually doubled."

According to Dr. Melinda Clark, "dental exams of preschoolers and early Head Starts in New York State reveal that 40% of children have already had dental disease. And 70% of that 41% have untreated dental decay."

.A 2009 NYS Dep't of Health Report reveals that, in 100% fluoridated New York City (since 1965), one third (38%) of third grade children have
untreated cavities. And 25% of NYC adults (65
and older) are toothless. Compare that to the rest
of the state where 16% are without teeth but is only 40% fluoridated.

New York City’s Chinese-American 2-to-11-year-olds, living in
the low-income area of [fluoridated]Manhattan's Chinatown have much more primary tooth decay when compared to white
and other minority groups nationally (NYS
Dental Journal June/July 2011).

Most of NYC's Chinese-American
children are U.S. born - 63%
have primary tooth decay compared to only 38% of children in a national study.

The authors write, "This
high prevalence of caries in the primary dentition is also similar to a
national survey of children in mainland China,
where three out of four children were found to be affected by caries in primary
teeth," averaging about 5 decayed teeth

• According to New York University’s School of Dentistry, "The need for dental care is especially acute among impoverished (NYC) children, who have 60 percent more untreated cavities than their peers at higher socioeconomic levels." (4)

• Lack of oral health care for adults in Harlem is a hidden crisis, write researchers in the American Journal of Public Health. (5)

• "Adolescents in northern Manhattan (another NYC borough) have higher caries prevalence than their national counterparts,” The Journal of Public Health Dentistry, reports." (6)

• Latinos and African American seniors suffer high rates of tooth decay and tooth loss in Northern Manhattan (7), according to the Journal of Community Health.

• A higher prevalence of dental decay is found in New York City African Americans, aged 18 - 64, than found nationally, reports Dental Clinics of North America. (8)

• Dental caries, among disadvantaged 3 to 4-year-old children in northern Manhattan, are higher than the national average (9), according to Pediatric Dentistry.

• After over fifty years of water fluoridation, many children in Newburgh, New York have more cavities and more fluoride--caused discolored teeth (dental fluorosis) than children in never-fluoridated Kingston, New York, according to a New York State Department of Health study published in the New York State Dental Journal (10).

• Second-graders from non-fluoridated Long Island, New York, are more cavity-free than second graders nationally (11) where two thirds of Americans drink fluoridated public water supplies.

• Despite a tremendous effort to improve oral health in fluoridated Rochester and Monroe County, lack of dental care has created a tooth decay crisis.(12)

• In fluoridated Syracuse and Massena, many children are raised in homes where they feel it's their destiny to have tooth decay and tooth pain.(13)

• "Poor oral health was identified as the number one complaint in a population-based survey of Central Harlem conducted in 1992-1994." (14)

Besides, after six decades of water fluoridation, cavity rates have increased recently in America’s 2 to 4 year-old population who should be the most “fluoride-protected.” (23a)

And, according to the American Dental Association News, average net income of a full time independent non-solo pediatric dentist was $336,860 in 2001, up more than twenty-five percent since 1998. Since eighty percent of all decay occurs mostly in the dentist-abandoned poor, some public health dentists ask, what kinds of necessary dental services are provided to higher socio-economic kids to generate a net income of $336,860 annually?

In 1984, NYC spent $2.4 million for fluoridation chemicals, equipment and manpower, according to the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. In 2003, fluoride chemicals, alone, cost NYC $6 million, according to the New York Sun.

Even more worrying is that higher blood lead levels are found in New York State (and other) children whose water supplies contain the fluoride chemicals, silicofluorides, when compared to non-fluoridated or sodium fluoridated communities, reports Masters and Coplan and substantiated by CDC scientists.(24) Ironically, higher blood lead levels are linked to more cavities. (25)

The cost of fluoridation isn’t the only price we pay when silicofluorides are put into drinking water. “Silicofluorides have very costly side-effects,” says Roger Masters, PhD, co-author of the silicofluoride/lead studies. “Lead lowers IQ and influences behavior in many ways. Epidemiology shows that where silicofluorides are used, there are higher rates of learning disabilities, substance abuse, and violent crime. Our studies do not find similar effects for sodium fluoride,” says Masters.

“The result is that silicofluoride usage has the effect of increasing public expenses and taxes,” says Masters. For example costs of jailing criminals, adversely affected by silicofluorides and special education classes for children with lower IQ due to high-blood-lead levels could be diminished if the offending silicofluorides were removed from public water supplies, Masters explains.

"The oral health crisis facing America today shows fluoridation and public health dentistry is failing America’s neediest children. Why is organized dentistry less supportive of a public health approach to improving access to care? Perhaps that’s because Americans spent roughly $64 billion on dental procedures last year with more than half of those procedures being cosmetic—fillings, crowns, implants, and high-end restorative procedures, according to government data," reported in Access, an American Dental Hygienists' Association publication.(26)

Organized dentistry often hinders programs designed to reach out to America's underserved, protecting their monopoly rather than America's neediiest. The ADA publicly invalidates dental hygienists solo practices along with their "Give-Kids-A-Smile" public relations materials. The hygienists lash back with their own news release (27) The ADA also frowns on dental therapists, specially trained hygienists who can fill the cavities dentists refuse to.(28)

References:

(1) September 2000 “Oral Health Factors Contributing to Low Use of DentalServices by Low-Income Populations,” General Accounting Office
http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/he00149.pdf

(8) Dental Clinics of North America, January 2003 "Dental caries prevalence among a sample of African American adults in New York City,"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12519005&dopt=Abstract

27) ADHA’s Response to ADA Study: The Economic Impact of Unsupervised Dental Hygiene Practice and its Impact on Access to Care in the State of Colorado , February 4, 2005
http://www.adha.org/news/012805-study.htm

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Janet Lail learned to live for years with the constant pain she likens to brillo pads rubbed over scorched skin (ouch) and monthly hospitalizations due to a kidney disease (chronic pyelonephritis) that requires she drink loads of water.

Then suddenly the pain disappeared and her hospital visits became fewer and farther between. Even the doctors were confounded-–nothing had changed – except the water-–it was no longer fluoridated.

Lail’s water provider, the South Blount Utility District in Tennessee opened a new plant in June 2004 and started providing unfluoridated water.
Lail told this story to Lesli Bales-Sherrod, a reporter for the Daily Times of Maryville, Tennessee (1)

“`I thought it was a fluke or something,’ (Lail) acknowledged. ‘When you’ve been sick like that for so many years, you don’t want to analyze why (your’re doing better). I didn’t want to talk about it; I was afraid it might go away,’” Bales-Sherrod writes.

Lail is willing to show her medical records to the skeptical. But she probably doesn’t know that the literature is littered with warnings that people with pyelonephritis should avoid fluoride.

But, for some reason, otherwise sensible people trust dentists’ opinions on fluoride’s bodily effects-–as if looking into mouths all day can detect kidney problems.

So legislators follow dentists’ advice and put fluoride into their constituents’ water supplies. Media knight dentists as fluoride experts and write positive fluoride stories, not at all shy to belittle their readers opposed to fluoridation-–a script handed to them by the fluoridationists.

Dentists assure anyone who will listen that, when added to drinking water, fluoride, like a miracle drug, prevents tooth decay with absolutely no harmful effects, except maybe some discolored teeth.

Dentists need to get acquainted with Lail and the scientific literature. It’s well known that fluoride harms kidneys and/or people whose kidneys don’t excrete fluoride properly.

“Kidney patients retain as much as 60% more fluoride than do persons in normal health,” writes physician George Waldbott, the leading medical expert on the clinical aspects of chronic fluoride toxicity when he wrote “Fluoridation the Great Dilemma,” published in 1978 with Harvard educated Albert Burgshthler, Phd, university professor and now Editor of the journal, “Fluoride.”

Waldbott describes two of his patients harmed by fluoridated water.

Twenty-seven year old G.L.’s kidney disease was so bad, she was slated to have her left kidney removed. Additionally, she suffered from pain and numbness in her arms and legs, spastic bowels, mouth ulcers, and headaches.

After, following Waldbott’s advice to avoid the fluoridated water, not only did the above symptoms disappear, but her left kidney began to function again. A five year follow-up found her still healthy.

E. P., 39 years old, had advanced pyelitis (another name for pyelonephritis, Janet Lail’s disease) of the left kidney, bone changes and the same clinical picture as G.L.

E.P.’s diseased kidney and other symptoms improved markedly within six weeks after she stopped drinking her artificially fluoridated water supply.

“One of the most striking features in the early stage of fluorosis is the craving for fluids, accompanied by excess production of urine. Indeed, the more water the patient drinks the thirstier he or she becomes,” writes Waldbott.

Dentists rely on outdated and questionable data to absolve fluoride in kidney problems. For instance Hodge and Smith wrote that “no soft tissue stores fluoride.” We now know that Hodge’s main concern in the 1940’s was to downplay fluoride’s bad effects to protect the super-secret Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb that ended World War II.

Hodge knew that fluoride emissions from Manhattan Project contracters were killing and maiming nearby farm crops and animals. (See “The Fluoride Deception” by Christopher Bryson). But stopping the fluoride emissions could kill the project. So instead they downplayed or ignored fluoride’s ill effects.

In 1991 the U.S. government admitted fluoride’s harm. “...subsets of the population may be unusually susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride and its compounds. These populations include the elderly, people with magnesium deficiency, and people with cardiovascular and kidney problems,” is reported in, the “Toxicological Profile for Fluorides, Hydrogen Fluoride, and Fluorine,” by the U.S. Department of Health (1991).

It was even known in 1965 that fluoride adversely affects people with Lail’s disease.

"A patient with renal disease (probably chronic pyelonephritis) has been reported whose bone contained fluorine in a concentration exceeding 5,000 ppm. There was no history of exposures to fluorides, and her usual drinking water contained less than 0.5 ppm of fluorine. This is of interest because in a postmortem study in Utah the highest concentrations of fluorine were found in those with chronic pyelonephritis… Sauerbrunn and associates have reported in this issue of the ANNALS the development of skeletal fluorosis in a patient with chronic polydipsia [excessive thirst]; the fluorine content of his drinking water was high but it was not at a level generally associated with the production of skeletal disorder. It seems probable that in this patient and in those with chronic pyelonephritis the high concentrations of fluorine found in the bone are the result of a greater consumption of water, which leads to a greater intake of fluorine,” excerpted from the Annals of Internal Medicine 1963 (1)

Two kidney patients, one with pyelonephritis, were unable to excrete fluoride properly which caused bone damaging skeletal fluorosis, researchers reported in 1972 (2).

In persons with advanced bilateral pyelonephritis, the skeletal fluoride content can be 4-fold that of similarly-exposed persons with normal kidneys, reported Marier in 1977 (2a),

"As renal function declines, due either to diseases or with aging, plasma and bone fluoride content both increase," according to the Surgeon General’s 1983 committee notes, reports Chemical & Engineering News (4).

The National Kidney Foundation in its "Position Paper on Fluoridation-1980" also expresses concern about fluoride retention in kidney patients. It cautions doctors "to monitor the fluoride intake of patients with chronic renal impairment, but stops short of recommending the use of fluoride-free drinking water for all patients with kidney disease. It does recommend, however, that dialysis patients use fluoride-free water for their treatments. (4)

Studies show that children with moderately impaired renal function (such as those who have diabetes insipidus), are at some risk of skeletal changes from consumption of fluoridated water, even if the fluoride level is no higher than 1 ppm. A number of researchers have found high concentrations of fluoride in the bones of patients who suffer from kidney disease and have found symptoms of skeletal fluorosis in some of these patients. However, there has been no systematic survey of people with impaired kidney function to determine how many actually suffer a degree of skeletal fluorosis that is clearly detrimental to their health.(4)

Fluoridationists may argue that only approximatrely 1 ppm is injected into water supplies. But did dentists calculate how much hydrogen fluoride South Blount customers breathe in from nearby Alcoa aluminum smokestack air emissions? Did they measure how much fluoride is ingested from dental products, foods and beverages other than water?

I doubt it, they seldom do.

The evidence is in. After 60 years of water fluoridation delivered to 2/3 of Americans via the water supply and 100% of Americans via their food and beverage supply, American children are grossly overfluoridated Yet, tooth decay is a national epidemic.

According to the National Kidney Foundation, more than 20 million Americans - one in nine adults - have chronic kidney disease.

The Pot Calls the Kettle Black

Trust me, dentists say, not those anti-fluoridationists with flawed scientific interpretation, fully aware that tagging us as "anti's" is pejorative in itself.

However, U.S. National Institutes of Health scientists were unable to find any valid science to support fluoride's use in preventing tooth decay.(6) and were "disappointed in the overall quality of the clinical data that it reviewed. According to the panel, far too many studies were small, poorly described, or otherwise methodologically flawed" (over 560 studies evaluated fluoride use), according to a news release issued by the Consensus Development Conference on the Diagnosis and Management of Dental Caries Throughout Life, convened by the National Institutes of Health on March 26-28, 2001 in Bethesda, MD.

British scientists have the same problem

"We were unable to discover any reliable good-quality evidence in the fluoridation literature world-wide...An association with water fluoride and other adverse effects ...was not found. However, we felt that not enough was known because the quality of the evidence was poor," according to a news release issued by Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD), University of York, England. (7) In 1999, the UK Department of Health commissioned CRD to conduct a systematic review into the efficacy and safety of the fluoridation of drinking water.

More studies about fluoride’s ill effect on kidney are here http://www.slweb.org/bibliography.html#kidney

Friday, December 16, 2005

Ignoring the democratic process and discouraging a healthy dialogue, California fluoridationists worked secretly, quickly and dishonestly to pass a 1995 California fluoridation law, that forces most California communities to add fluoride into their water supplies, whether Californians want it or not, according to “The Fluoride Victory,” published in the Journal of the California Dental Association.(1)

California Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, working with the California Dental Association (CDA), sponsored a fluoridation bill, eventually signed into law, forcing all California water companies, with 10,000 service connections, to add nonessential fluoride chemicals into the drinking water to prevent tooth decay, without constituent or local governing body approval, discussion or vote.

“To make the most of the element of surprise, it was decided that Speier would wait until the last possible moment to introduce her fluoridation bill,” writes author Joanne Boyd.

“’We pretty much knew we’d catch (the anti-fluoridation faction) by surprise because it wasn’t well known outside of the dental community what was going on,' said Liz Snow, assistant director of CDA’s Government Relations (lobbying) Office. ‘But we didn’t want to give the other side any more time to mobilize than absolutely necessary,’” writes Boyd.

William Keese, CDA Director of Government Relations, a lobbyist, received many compliments from other lobbyists on the campaign.

“I wouldn’t say we pulled a rabbit out of a hat, but it was a coup. We worked hard at getting prepared and using the element of surprise to our advantage. We moved fast and did it in one year," Boyd quotes Keese as saying.

Many of the nation’s most familiar pro-fluoride lobbiests, were involved in the California battle including zealous fluoridationist, dentist Michael Easley brought in from Kentucky, at the time. (By the way, tooth decay doubled in Kentucky after water fluoridation (2)).

Intending to insult anti-fluoridationists, Boyd quotes lobbiest Snow as saying, “’When you’re a single-issue person – when that issue pops up, regardless of where it is – that’s where you go,’ Snow said. They remind me of Deadheads. Anywhere the Grateful Dead would go, there would be the same group of followers.” Snow’s criticism more aptly fits Easley or the national lobbiests provided by the country-wide dentists’ union, the American Dental Association (ADA), which could be named the American Fluoridation Association.

Unlike pro-fluoridation special-interest groups, fluoridation opponents use their own time, their own money, usually to protect their own drinking water and have actually studied the issue. There are different opponents in every town.

On the other hand, the ADA, went all out to support the 1995 California fluoridation bill, assisting in spokesperson training, legislative testimony and providing literature to distribute, reports Boyd.

With decades of commercials, advertisements and organized dentistry’s web of support, influence and money working against them, and during the OJ trial, Californians opposed to fluoridation hardly had a chance to voice dissent.

The California campaign is a "blueprint" for oranized dentistry to push fluoridation across the USA. This despite evidence fluoridation fails to reduce tooth decay by the same dentists who told the California legislature the opposite.

In fact, out-of-town pro-fluoride troops are on the ground, thirty strong armed with grant money, in Joplin Missouri, right now, spreading the gospel according to Organized Dentistry(13)forcing the good people of Joplin to organize, raise money and fight their own representatives to keep their water fluoride-free (13a).

Kansas City, MO, is already fluorided, yet 31% of small children have severe tooth decay (15). A Springfield newspaper reports similar dire decay problems, not from lack of fluoride, the water is fluoridated (16); but from lack of dental care.

Pollick should join the Flat Earth Society – in fact – he should be their President because he doesn’t even believe his own research.

According to Pollick and colleagues, "It may...be that fluoridation of drinking water does not have a strong protective effect against early childhood caries (ECC)," was reported in the Winter 2003 Journal of Public Health Dentistry(4).

Howard Pollick, DDS, is a clinical professor with the University of California San Francisco School of Dentistry, Department of Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences, and co-chairman of the California Fluoridation Task Force.

Pollick's team studied 2,520 California preschool children as part of the “California Oral Health Needs Assessment of Children Study” which helped convinced California legislators to mandate fluoridation statewide in 1995(5).

A majority of Asian-American children that Pollick and his research team studied, lived in areas with fluoridated water; yet they suffered with the highest prevalence and the greatest amount of cavities.

"...the primary sampling units were selected on the basis of fluoridation status: three were fluoridated urban regions, two were rural (nonfluoridated),and five were non-fluoridated urban regions," they report. "Our analysis did not appear to be affected by whether or not children lived in an area with fluoridated water," reports Pollick et al.

Pollick reports in the "International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health" that infant forumula made with optimally fluoridated water might create brown and pitted permanent teeth(17). We wonder if Pollick, turned fluoridation lobbiest in Arkansas, informs elected bodies that, if they fluoridate their water supplies, they must provide bottled fluoride-free water for infant consumption.

Many studies show children's teeth will grow in stained if fed formula reconstituted with fluoridated water.(18)

On 9/2/04 Pollick presented selective pro-fluoridation information to two committees of the Arkansas legislature, instigating a state-wide fluoridation law, telling legislators to disbelieve anti-fluoridationists because they use the internet. Unfortunately, for Pollick, we use his own words to contradict what he tells legislators in private. I guess that's why he doesn't recommend the internet.

Organized dentistry gets an A+ for political savvy; but an F for fluoride science. Legislators assume organized dentistry does their fluoride homework; but they don't. Fluoridating dentists are like wind-up dolls programmed to say one thing. Even if they wanted to, they can't say anything negative about fluoride or their owners would put them out of busines.

Fluoride opposition is based on sound science – not back-door political activism. Unfortunately, we don’t have the money, influence and network they do. We only have the truth.

People who get paid to promote fluoridation:

-- Dental directors in almost every state with offices, budgets, staffs and traveling expenses, most of whom aren’t passionate about fluoridation – just doing their job.

-- An army of uniformed U.S. Centers for Disease Control dentists, based in Atlanta, Georgia, who took up the front row, at taxpayer expense, in a Suffolk County, New York, legislative fluoridation meeting. The Suffolk County legislature still voted down fluoridation.

-- National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) dentists. The NIDCR displays a magnified image of a fluoride crystal on their website’s logo as a reminder that this institute was born on the back of fluoridation. Millions of dollars are meted out to dental researchers to study fluoride’s tooth effects – but not fluoride’s bodily effects.

-- Public-health-dentists and dental professors in Universities and dental schools who sometimes require entire classes of dental students take up space and alloted time before governing bodies in local fluoridation battles to essentially silence residents opposed to fluoridation.

-- The U.S. Surgeon General who reports a dental health epidemic in the U.S. despite almost five decades of water fluoridation reaching about 2/3 of Americans and vitually 100% through the food and beverage supply.

At their disposal is a web of dentists across the U.S. too willing to follow Organized Dentistry’s instructions to lobby their legislator-patients and instigate fluoridation whenever they can, making it appear to be a local initiative. They are offered strategy materials, videos, power point presentations and a half day continuing education program entitled “Get the Drop on Community Water Fluoridation!”

Don’t expect the research community to speak on your behalf. Some who did lost their jobs, grant money and reputations such as Phyllis Mullenix, PhD, once a rising star in the research community until she discovered fluoride could pass into the brain causing mental deficits.

Instead of ordering up more studies to prove or disprove her findings, organized dentistry destroyed the messenger and ignored her findings(9) which have never been successfully refuted scientifically. However, research from China bolsters her findings.

Dr. William Marcus exposed the government’s downgrading of bone cancer in lab animals exposed to fluoride in a study by the National Toxicology Program (9a). Marcus was fired, then re-hired under the whistleblowers act with back pay; but the scientific research showing fluoride induces bone cancer in rats has never been corrected.(10)

Canadian researchers aren’t encouraged to speak out either when they disagree (11).

The fluoridators still strategically avoid debates because they know their information doesn’t stand up to objective scrutiny.

Organized dentistry’s tactic now is to work behind the scenes forming “dental health committees” presenting one-sided, sometimes wrong, information, to local children’s, health and church groups, and the media, convincing them that fluoridation is safe, effective and cheap while insulting and denigrating those opposed or as Easley call us, “fluorophobes.” They effectively indoctrinate trusting people to love them and hate us. They are masters of manipulation.

Susan Allen, Florida's Fluoridation Coordinator wrote in a 1990 memo to St. Petersburg's Director of Inner City Governmental Relations, "There are several tactical strategies that seem to promote (fluoridation) success; the 1st being - Keep a low profile: the least amount of publicity the better.

4. Avoid a referendum. The statistics are that 3 out of 4 fluoridation referenda fail."

It’s incredible that fluoridation opponents win any fluoridation battles against this huge fluoridating machine. But we do (8) because the evidence speaks for itself. We just present it.

Despite fluoridation since 1954, 2/3 of elementary schoolchildren and about 1/3 of San Francisco preschoolers, had cavities, according to a 1996/97 survey that also reveals cavity prevalence in fluoridated San Francisco is similar to the rest of California, mostly non-fluoridated at the time of the survey. (6)

Yet San Francisco reportedly will spend $2,500,000 on a new or updated fluoridation facility (7). At the same time San Francisco sells non-fluoridated bottled water and brags that their Mayor and Water Department employees drink the bottled water - fluoride-free.

(17)"Water Fluoridation and the Environment: Current Perspective in the United States," Howard F. Pollick, BDS, MPH, Internationa Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, Jun/Sep, 2004.http://www.ijoeh.com/pfds/1003_Pollick.pdf

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Severe tooth decay is responsible for 2/3 of hospital visits by children under six in New York State (1), where almost 70% of the population drinks fluoridated water which is supposed to stop that sort of thing. Evidence shows we are on the wrong track in defeating early childhood cavities.

New York City spends anywhere between $6 and $14 million annually on water fluoridation. Yet more New York City children required cavity-related hospitalizations, proportionately, than two of New York State’s largest non-fluoridated counties, Suffolk and Nassau, whether payment was made by Medicaid or privately.

In New York City, where fluoride is added to water supplies to prevent tooth decay, one hospital charged from $929 to $12,199 to treat 96 children with severely decayed teeth, excluding the dentist and anesthesiologist fees. Children needed extensive work including stainless steel crowns, extractions, root canal therapy, fillings, other restorations, periodontal procedures, surgeries and/or more.

New York State hospital charges for the 2,726 early childhood cavities-related surgical visits required by children under six, in 1999, lie anywhere between $2.5 and $33 million, report NYS Department of Health Dentists, Kumar and Green, and others, in the Winter 2003 Journal of Public Health Dentistry, who also report they may be underestimating the numbers of children so treated.

National Medicaid costs for hospital treatment of early childhood cavities are between $100 to $200 million annually.

Even after hospital treatment, these children return with new lesions, say Kumar and colleagues.

Besides fluoridation, the New York State government provides dental screenings, dental sealants, early childhood cavity prevention, fluoride mouthrinse and fluoride supplement programs. (5)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control predicts that “Every dollar spent on community water fluoridation saves from $7 to $42 in treatment costs.” (2) The American Dental Association says fluoridation will prevent early childhood cavities. But that doesn’t seem to be happening in New York City.

Dentists continue to tout fluoride, brushing, visits to see them and less sugary drinks as the antidote to tooth decay, but neglect nutrients essential to create teeth that won’t fall apart in childhood.

Early childhood cavities, once called baby-bottle tooth decay, is still blamed on inappropriate feeding practices (non-nutritive sucking, prolong bottle/breast feeding, nap-time feeding). But the majority of children put to sleep with bottle or breast do not develop cavities. The association of early childhood cavities with low-socioeconomic status is stronger and more consistent. And low-socioeconmic groups are more apt to be ill-fed and/or malnourished.

Teeth begin formation in utero. “Prenatal deficiencies of calcium and vitamin D can lead to enamel defects, and enamel defects in turn predispose teeth to caries,” report Smith and Moffatt in their article, “Baby-bottle tooth decay: are we on the right track?” (3)

“Baby-bottle tooth decay (BBTD) is especially prevalent in Aboriginal people, for whom studies have consistently reported diets deficient in vitamin D and calcium. BBTD may be a consequence of the poor socioeconomic conditions and malnutrition. Perhaps more attention should be given to primary prevention,” report Smith and Moffatt.

Calcium is essential for strong teeth. Ingested fluoride is not essential to prevent cavities and has no nutritional need, write Warren and Levy in Dental Clinics of North America, April 2003.

Recently, a staunch fluoridation promoter, dentist Howard Pollick, had to admit: “It may...be that fluoridation of drinking water does not have a strong protective effect against early childhood caries (ECC),” in the Winter 2003 Journal of Public Health Dentistry.

Basil, the only Swiss city fluoridating water supplies, recently stopped because no evidence indicated fluoridation reduced decay. In fact, Basil children’s cavities increased despite decades of water fluoridation. And several studies show cavities decreased when fluoridation terminated.(4)

Acids and bacteria pull calcium and other essential minerals from teeth, constantly, but are replaced almost as fast by the same components in saliva. When outgo exceeds input, it’s a cavity.

Dentists might be the heroes they think they are today if they lobbied for calcium in water supplies, rather than fluoride.

“...fluorides are most effective in preventing decay on the smooth surfaces of teeth.” according to the 1984 Director of the National Institute of Health, Dr. Harold Loe. But early childhood cavities usually occur on the smooth surfaces and the incidence is growing. And fluoridation isn’t stopping it.

If governments want to spend money preventing children’s tooth decay, tax-dollars would be better spent feeding children required nutrients, not fluoride. Their teeth as well as their bodies would be stronger with less of a strain on the health care system.

Most poor children, turned away by most dentists who refuse Medicaid patients, must wait until their decay spreads and abscesses before they can get treatment at a hospital’s emergency room. Preventing one cavity over a lifetime through water fluoridation may save $42, but not filling another cavity may cost $12,199 to the taxpayers.

Dentists who graduate owing upwards to $100,000, and sometimes more, in student loans, didn’t get into the business to do charity work. They should be paid the same amount they get from private insurers. Government would save money in the long run; and children wouldn’t have to live in pain. And every American wouldn’t have to drink water that has unnecessary, harmful fluoride chemicals added.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

This is a fictional conversation between the dentists who wrote the new report (CDC) and an average American (ME). All quotes are from the CDC report exactly as written.

CDC: “In the earliest days of fluoride research, investigators hypothesized that fluoride affects enamel and inhibits dental caries (cavities) only when incorporated into developing dental enamel...”

ME: Hey, we all make mistakes doc.

CDC: “Fluoride works primarily after teeth have erupted…”

ME: Oh, I see. But what does swallowed fluoride do?

CDC: “Fluoride ingested during tooth development can also result in a range of visually detectable changes in enamel opacity... because of hypomineralization.”

ME: What happens?

CDC: “...chalklike, lacy markings across a tooth's enamel surface... In the moderate form, >50% of the enamel surface is opaque white. The rare, severe form manifests as pitted and brittle enamel. After eruption, teeth with moderate or severe fluorosis might develop areas of brown stain. In the severe form, the compromised enamel might break away, resulting in excessive wear of the teeth.

ME: So how does fluoride reduce tooth decay?

CDC: “Fluoride concentrated in plaque and saliva inhibits the demineralization of sound enamel and enhances the remineralization”

ME: But doc, you make me brush off the plaque twice a day. Then your torturer hygienist digs out what I missed twice a year.

CDC: “...fluoride is released from dental plaque in response to lowered pH at the tooth-plaque interface.”

ME: Hello, are you listening? In fact, you or your hygienist brush my off my plaque during my semi-annual cleanings with that gritty fluoride paste.

CDC: “Fluoride-containing paste is routinely used during dental prophylaxis (i.e., cleaning). The abrasive paste, which contains 4,000--20,000 ppm fluoride, might restore the concentration of fluoride in the surface layer of enamel removed by polishing...”

ME: Oh.

CDC: “Fluoride paste is not accepted by FDA or ADA as an efficacious way to prevent dental caries.”

ME: Now you are scaring me, doc. Well, what about the fluoridated toothpaste I use every day?

CDC: “The concentration of fluoride in ductal saliva, as it is secreted from salivary glands, is low --- approximately 0.016 parts per million (ppm) in areas where drinking water is fluoridated and 0.006 ppm in nonfluoridated areas.

ME: So the fluoride in saliva is killing Mr. germs!

CDC: “This concentration of fluoride is not likely to affect cariogenic activity”

ME: Hey Abbot. Who’s on first.

CDC: “In laboratory studies, when a low concentration of fluoride is constantly present, one type of cariogenic bacteria, Streptococcus mutans, produces less acid”

CDC: “Whether this reduced acid production reduces the cariogenicity of these bacteria in humans is unclear”

ME: Is this report supposed to be a comedy?

ME: OK, so fluoride doesn’t incorporate into developing teeth to prevent tooth decay; but does concentrate in the plaque on the outside of my teeth but I brush it off. Fluoride’s in my saliva but at doses not high enough to reduce tooth decay. So fluoride must get into my teeth somehow to prevent cavities.

CDC: “The prevalence of dental caries in a population is not inversely related to the concentration of fluoride in enamel, and a higher concentration of enamel fluoride is not necessarily more efficacious in preventing dental caries.”

ME: Oy! So what’s good about fluoridation?

CDC: "Today, all U.S. residents are exposed to fluoride to some degree, and widespread use of fluoride has been a major factor in the decline in the prevalence and severity of dental caries in the United States and other economically developed countries.”

ME: BELIEVE? But doc remember what happened when you believed ingested fluoride incorporated into developing enamel to reduce tooth decay.? Can’t you do any better. What happened to those early studies with natural fluoride that gave birth to fluoridation?

CDC: “... the limitations of these studies make summarizing the quality of evidence on community water fluoridation as Grade I inappropriate.”

ME: So they just don’t make the grade, huh. That’s a shame. Well, you’ve been adding un-natural fluoride to water supplies for over 50 years. You said you had mounds of studies proving its safety and efficacy. What about those?

CDC: “The quality of evidence from studies on the effectiveness of adjusting fluoride concentration in community water to optimal levels is Grade II-1.”

ME: They don’t make top grade either. Bummer! This is upsetting you. Let’s change the subject. So you want bottled water labels to show fluoride content?

CDC: “Producers of bottled water should label the fluoride concentration of their products.”

ME: This sounds reasonable.

CDC: “In the United States, water and processed beverages (e.g., soft drinks and fruit juices) can provide approximately 75% of a person's fluoride intake.”

ME: Are you asking for the fluoride content labeled on soda and fruit juices?

CDC: (silent on this issue)

ME: What’s so bad about fluoride that it has to be listed on the labels.

CDC: “Fluoride ingested during tooth development can also result in a range of visually detectable changes in enamel opacity… These changes have been broadly termed enamel fluorosis, certain extremes of which are cosmetically objectionable… Severe forms of this condition can occur only when young children ingest excess fluoride, from any source, during critical periods of tooth development.…Concerns regarding the risk for enamel fluorosis are limited to children aged <8>

ME: I would prefer you tell me the amount that would guarantee against any fluorosis, even mild, but give me what you have.

CDC: From Table 2 - Adequate intake of fluoride for:

· a baby 0-6 months old or 16 pounds is 0.01 milligrams day (mg/day)
· a child 6-12 months or 20 pounds is 0.5 mg/day
· a child 1-3 years or 29 pounds is 0.7
· a child 4-8 years or 48 pounds is 1.1 mg/day

ME: So babies are safe if they drink these amounts even though most of them don’t have teeth to get any topical benefits

CDC: “In a survey of four U.S. cities with different fluoride concentrations in the drinking water (range: 0.37--1.04 ppm), ... infants aged 6 months ingested 0.21--0.54 mg fluoride per day”

ME: Oh my goodness. That’s too high. They may get fluorosis. What should we do?

...Continued in Part II http://fluoridedangers.blogspot.com/2006/04/cdc-recommendations-part-2.html

Like most drugs, fluoride causes what it purports to cure. And fluoride can't protect teeth from a bad diet.

Dentists tell us that drinking “optimal” levels of fluoridated water - 1 part per million or 1 milligram fluoride per liter (quart) - each day, reduces tooth decay without serious side effects. But this dental dogma has never been proven scientifically. However, research shows, above optimal fluoride levels causes tooth decay; and most Americans get more fluoride then they need.

The severe outward sign of fluoride overdose is dental fluorosis - yellow, brown or black stained teeth. Cavities increase in people with severe fluorosis according to a dentistry textbook entitled, “Dentistry, Dental Practice and the Community,” by Burt and Eklund.

This phenomenon has been demonstrated in the United States from National Institute of Dentistry and Craniofacial Research studies in seven communities in northern Illinois. The results of the dental decay examinations, related to fluoride concentrations in drinking water, form a J-shaped curve. With increasing fluoride levels, cavity experience diminishes to a certain point and then starts to rise again, the authors report.

These data suggest that the true relationship between water fluoride levels and dental decay is the J-shaped curve, with the turning point in the J being something between 3 and 4 times the optimal level, they write.

The problem is that children already receive above optimum doses of fluoride even without drinking fluoridated water, studies show. By 1974 samples of duplicate meals indicated more than ten times as much fluoride as had been found thirty years earlier – and this study didn't factor in fluoride content of snack foods.

Maybe excess fluoride is why tooth decay is still a major U.S. dilemma. Even though U.S. children are fluoride saturated from water, air, foods, beverages and dental products, the surgeon general reports that tooth decay is still a major problem and an epidemic in our poor and minority populations.

Yet, children from the African country of Uganda have less tooth decay than American children even though most Ugandan children don’t use fluoride toothpaste or even a toothbrush to clean their teeth. In fact, Ugandan children who drink high fluoride water have more tooth decay than their equals in low fluoride districts, according to “Clinical Oral Investigations."

“No teeth were lost due to caries (cavities) in the low fluoride district but 6 of 135 (4%) in the high-fluoride district,” report authors Rwenyonyi, et al. Ugandan children, aged 10 to 14, with similar socioeconomic backgrounds and diets, who lived their entire lives in either low fluoride (0.5 mg fluoride per liter) or high fluoride water districts (2.5 mg fluoride per liter), were examined for tooth decay by the same dentist, with results verified. “Surprisingly, there was a significantly higher caries prevalence and DMFT (decayed, missing, filled teeth) score in the high-fluoride district than in the low-fluoride district,” the authors write.

“In one low fluoride area..., all children were caries-free compared to 75% to 86% in the other areas,” they report.

A different paper, presented at a June 2001 meeting of the International Association of Dental Research by Louw, et al, shows the same unexpected results with a different African population. Children drinking 3.0 mg/L water fluoride have more cavities than children drinking .19 and .48 mg/L fluoride. In contrast, only 65% of fluoride-saturated American 10-year-olds are cavity-free and a, mere, 35% of 14-year-olds are cavity-free.

Americans drink fluoridated water, use fluoridated toothpaste, eat foods and beverages made with fluoridated water, along with fluoride pesticide residues. Fluoride supplements, mouthrinses, treatments, varnishes, and other fluoridated dental products are used profusely in the U.S. And fluoride is a major industrial air pollutant.

The big difference between American and Ugandan children is diet. The basic Ugandan diet is composed of complex carbohydrates, e.g., cooking banana, cassava, potatoes, maize and sorghum eaten at regular meals. About 80% of the children reported no between-meal intake of sugar containing items.

According to “Fast Food Nation,” by Eric Schlosser, Americans drink soda at an annual rate of about fifty-six gallons per person - that’s nearly six hundred twelve-ounce cans of soda per person. And, since sales of soda is subsidizing education in many U.S. school districts, children are encouraged to drink more, rather than less, soda while in school. This leaves less room and desire for milk in schoolchildren's diets.

Schlosser reports that twenty years ago, American teenage boys drank twice as much milk as soda, now they drink twice as much soda as milk. And soft drink consumption is common among American toddlers.

Milk contains calcium and magnesium, essential nutrients required to form healthy teeth. Soda depletes the body’s calcium stores. Fluoride is neither a nutrient nor essential. Fluorosed teeth contain more fluoride and less calcium than normal teeth, according to A. K. Susheela, Ph.D., Director, Fluorosis Research and Rural Development Foundation, in “A Treatise on Fluorosis.”

One would think dentists would be campaigning to have calcium placed in the drinking water but then they might lose the financial support they enjoy from fluoride manufacturers of toothpastes and other dental materials. When dentists endorse fluoride, people buy it.

Dentists report they are seeing more tooth decay among their soda drinking patients despite full fluoride “protection.” Ironically, many soft drinks and juices contain “optimal” fluoride levels because fluoridated tap water is used to make them.

And a study in the Journal of “Contemporary Dental Practice” shows that, among people who drink fluoridated water and use fluoride toothpaste, tooth decay still progresses after snacking on cola, apple juice or sweetened yogurt between meals. However, cavities remineralized (partially reversed) when snacks were whole milk, skim milk, 2% milk, cheddar cheese, plain yogurt and chocolate milk or no snacks at all.

An article in “RDH” (Registered Dental Hygienist) reports, “Dr. Carole Palmer, professor of nutrition and preventive dentistry at Tufts University, says, ‘We’re looking at why these things (nutrition in dentistry) have fallen by the wayside. There was a perception, perhaps, that fluoride had resolved the problem (of caries), but that’s far from the truth. A lack of research and funding in nutrition and oral connections has made it difficult to move forward. But nutritional counseling and diet counseling need to be important components of preventive dental care.’”

One such study presented at the International Association for Dental Research meeting this year shows, to no one's astonishment, that obesity and tooth decay are linked. There is also an epidemic of obesity in the U.S. according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Tooth decay is a disease of poor nutrition and high fluoride. Based on thirty years of study on .4 million children, Teotia and Teotia report "Our findings indicate that dental caries was caused by high fluoride and low dietary calcium intakes, separately and through their interactions."

Further substantiating the hypothesis that nutrition and not fluoride is the answer to less cavities: Ireland, 73% fluoridated since the 1960’s, has a higher tooth decay rate than five other European countries that don’t fluoridate the water, according to the June 30, 2001, Irish Independent. The Irish are also fluoride saturated; but tooth decay is still rampant in under-privileged areas of Ireland, they report.

In fact, an Irish legislator is calling for a ban on fluoridation in Ireland immediately.

Like most things American, fluoride is overblown, over-prescribed, and over-used. Along with the expansion of fast food restaurants and American waistlines, fluoride's expansion into the food supply via the water supply is out of control and may be creating instead of curing tooth decay. It's time to stop water fluoridation. Fluoride can't fix a poor diet.

As I reported in December 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now allows very high levels of fluoride in common foods. See: “How Much Fluoride Did You Eat Today?”

There is no dispute that fluoride is toxic in large doses. The EPA sets maximum fluoride levels of 4 parts per million (or 4 milligrams per approximately 1 quart) in U.S. water supplies to protect against skeletal fluorosis – a crippling arthritic-like condition. Much less fluoride ingested daily puts children at risk of dental fluorosis – white spotted, yellow or brown and sometimes pitted and crumbly teeth. But too much fluoride can and has killed.

For example, the probable toxic dose (PTD) of fluoride is less than two ounces of 1,000 ppm fluoridated toothpaste, commonly sold in the U.S., for a one-year-old child and about three ounces for the average 5-year-old, according to Whitford in the Journal of Dental Research (May 1987).

“An 8.2 ounce container of a 1500 ppm fluoride dentifrice would contain nearly 360 mg of fluoride, or seven times the PTD for a one year old and more than 3.5 times the PTD for a five year old,” writes Whitford.

“For these reasons, we recommend that parents be advised to supervise the use of dentifrices by young children, that they caution their children not to swallow or eat the dentifrice, and that, in households with young children, dentifrices be stored such that they cannot be used in the absence of a parent. Manufacturers should give consideration to including on the label the statement that the use of the product by young children should be supervised by a a parent and to developing a 'child proof' container cap,” writes Whitford in this 1987 article.

The FDA now requires a warning label on fluoridated products. But the American Dental Association actually plays down fluoride’s toxic effects whenever they can protecting fluoride’s image, for some reason, but not you or your children.

The ADA claims the warning is just to avoid the dental disfigurement fluoride can cause:

From the ADA website:

“The American Dental Association's (ADA) Council on Scientific Affairs believes that one part of the warning now required on fluoride toothpastes by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could unnecessarily frighten parents and children, and that the label greatly overstates any demonstrated or potential danger posed by fluoride toothpastes.”

Fletcher reports, “[t]he new Environmental Protection Agency tolerances were requested by Dow AgroSciences following the firm's expansion of its pesticide sulfuryl fluoride - trade name ProFume – which is used to fumigate food processing facilities and storage areas.”

“The product targets stored product pests, as well as those insects that may be transported from the field on food commodities. But some environmental groups argue that the new levels are potentially dangerous,” reports Fletcher.

The Environmental Working Group, Beyond Pesticides and the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) challenged the maximum legal limits for the fluoride-based pesticide in foods, which have been set at levels that dwarf the amount allowed in tap water. In just one case, the EPA is allowing 900 parts per million (ppm) of fluoride in dried eggs, as opposed to the maximum 4 ppm allowed in tap water.

One third of the nation's eggs are sold and consumed in dried, reconstituted form.The groups noted that 900 ppm set for dried eggs is extremely close to the amount used in toothpaste (1,000 ppm), a level that is considered toxic if consumed in greater than pea sized portions.

"How can the EPA consider 900 ppm in eggs safe, while the Food and Drug Administration directs parents to call poison control centers if their children consume more than a pea sized portion of toothpaste with fluoride at 1,000 ppm?" asked Paul Connett, PhD, Executive Director of FAN. "Unlike toothpaste, eggs are meant to be eaten, not spit out."

The EPA has set fluoride tolerances for over 200 foodstuffs ranging from 5 ppm in cheese all the way up to 900 ppm in powdered eggs. The groups warn that at the maximum level of fluoride a serving of scrambled eggs made with as few as two egg equivalents could make a child vomit and a four egg omelet could have the same effect on an adult.

“Dow has never conducted crucial safety tests on fluoride residues yet scientific studies point to serious health risks from ingesting even small amounts. A wealth of independent, peer reviewed studies have found adverse effects on children's developing brains, the male reproductive system, kidneys, and bones,” according to the Groups Joint News Release.

Wheat flour is allowed up to 125 ppm. For comparison, the maximum level of fluoride allowed in drinking water is 4 ppm and the natural level of fluoride in mothers' milk is approximately 0.008 ppm.

The EPA argues that most fumigated foods won't contain the highest allowed levels so there is no need to worry. Yet the USDA's surveillance program for pesticide residues on foods routinely finds samples bought at stores that exceed the EPA tolerances. The potential for a significant number of acute poisoning cases every year is very real.

"We are very concerned that total fluoride exposure is not safe for children," said Richard Wiles, Senior Vice-President of Environmental Working Group (EWG). "EPA is relying on outdated science to support this increase in fluoride exposure, and in our view has not discharged its legal duty to thoroughly consider the effects of fluoride on infants and children, from all routes of exposure, based on a thorough review of the most recent peer-reviewed science."

"This is yet another example of the EPA pesticide division protecting the bottom line of Dow AgroSciences rather than the health of the American public," says Jay Feldman of Beyond Pesticides.

"It is ironic that, while 11 EPA Unions, representing over 7000 professionals, are calling for a moratorium on water fluoridation because of its likely role in causing osteosarcoma in young males, the EPA's pesticide division has approved the highest fluoride tolerances in US history.

With the Centers for Disease Control admitting that 1 in 3 American children have dental fluorosis [the telltale sign of overexposure to fluoride during early childhood] now is not the time to be adding more fluoride to the nation's food supply,” says Paul Connett, PhD, Executive Direction of the Fluoride Action Network.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

“More and more scientists are now seriously questioning the benefits of fluoride, even in small amounts,” says UNICEF, the international organization that protects children.

Fluoride is added to water supplies to reduce tooth decay. However, "... Fluoride inhibits enzymes that breed acid-producing oral bacteria whose acid eats away tooth enamel. This observation is valid, but some scientists now believe that the harmful impact of fluoride on other useful enzymes far outweighs the beneficial effect on caries prevention," according to the UNICEF Water Environment and Sanitation report, “Fluoride in water: An overview.” (1)

Dentists convince the public, trusting legislators and usually skeptical media that approximately one part per million fluoride added to water supplies confers “optimal” protection against tooth decay, without a shred of scientific support.

UNICEF reports that “ a single ‘optimal’ level for daily intake cannot be agreed because the nutritional status of individuals, which varies greatly, influences the rate at which fluoride is absorbed by the body. A diet poor in calcium for example, increases the body’s retention of fluoride.”

Further, they write “Fluoride ions bind with calcium ions, strengthening tooth enamel as it forms in children. Many researchers now consider this more of an assumption than fact, because of conflicting evidence from studies in India and several other countries over the past 10 to 15 years. Nevertheless, agreement is universal that excessive fluoride intake leads to loss of calcium from the tooth matrix, aggravating cavity formation throughout life rather than remedying it, and so causing dental fluorosis. Severe, chronic and cumulative overexposure can cause the incurable crippling of skeletal fluorosis.”

“Fluorosis presents a particular threat to children. According to a Swedish study, children and adolescents excrete fluoride less efficiently that adults do, and retain more fluoride in their bones,” according to UNICEF.

“It should be noted that fluoride is also found in some foodstuffs and in the air (mostly from production of phosphate fertilizers or burning of fluoride-containing fuels), so the amount of fluoride people actually ingest may be higher than assumed,” they write.

More Information From This Report:

Symptoms of fluorosis

Dental fluorosis, which is characterized by discoloured, blackened, mottled or chalky-white teeth, is a clear indication of overexposure to fluoride during childhood when the teeth were developing. These effects are not apparent if the teeth were already fully grown prior to the fluoride overexposure; therefore, the fact that an adult may show no signs of dental fluorosis does not necessarily mean that his or her fluoride intake is within the safety limit.

Chronic intake of excessive fluoride can lead to the severe and permanent bone and joint deformations of skeletal fluorosis. Early symptoms include sporadic pain and stiffness of joints: headache, stomach-ache and muscle weakness can also be warning signs. The next stage is osteosclerosis (hardening and calcifying of the bones), and finally the spine, major joints, muscles and nervous system are damaged.

Whether dental or skeletal, fluorosis is irreversible and no treatment exists. The only remedy is prevention, by keeping fluoride intake within safe limits.

Some governments are not yet fully aware of the fluoride problem or convinced of its adverse impact on their populations.

Better nutrition

Clinical data indicate that adequate calcium intake is clearly associated with a reduced risk of dental fluorosis. Vitamin C may also safeguard against the risk. In consequence, measures to improve the nutritional status of an affected population - particularly children - appear to be an effective supplement to the technical solutions discussed above.

Fluoridation probably does more damage than good says a Canadian government report. The best solution is to cease fluoridation, the author suggests (1). Despite fraudulent news releases, a British team of investigators found that fluoridation is based on poor science, has overstated benefits, and puts children at high risk of developing dental fluorosis (2).

Dentists claim hundreds of studies prove fluoride reduces decay. However, a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) panel convened this year to actually evaluate those and other dental studies and found them lacking. (3) An NIH news release reported: “...the panel was disappointed in the overall quality of the clinical data that it reviewed. According to the panel, far too many studies were small, poorly described, or otherwise methodologically flawed,” (including 562 studies evaluating fluoride use). So while the use of fluoride is often cited as the reason for decay reduction, there is little, if any, science to support that.

Fluoride overdose is widespread in both fluoridated and non- fluoridated communities(6) at the same time the United States Surgeon General dubbed oral disease a silent epidemic in his recent Oral Health Report (7). And Americans, men and women equally, are spending about $1.5 billion a year on dental bleaching products, and that may be the tip of the iceberg (8). How much is that due to dental fluorosis?

Additionally, fluoridated water should not be used to prepare infant cereals and infant formulas (10) forcing parents, who can afford it, to buy bottled water to avoid their fluoridated tap water - leaving the poor at a disadvantage, yet again.

Ironically, dentists often warn parents against using bottled water because of its lack of fluoride. Yet one of the best selling bottled water in health food stores is Trinity Springs with a natural fluoride content of 3.6 mg per Liter - enough to almost guarantee a child fluorosed teeth if he or she consumed it regularly. In some states the maximum contaminant level of fluoride which governments allow in public water supplies is only 2 mg per liter.

In the world’s most fluoridated country, where fluoride toothpastes are 95% of the market and where dental fluorosis rates are growing, the US youngest and poorest children have almost 5 times as much tooth decay as children of higher income families according to the National Institute of Dental Research and, in poor children with decay, almost 80% of it remains untreated(11). Ironically, African Americans have the highest dental fluorosis rates (14) and are among the minority groups experiencing the most decay.

In fact, after over 50 years of water fluoridation, children in Newburgh, New York, have more cavities and more dental fluorosis than children in never-fluoridated Kingston, NY(12).

Newburgh and Kingston are the experimental cities that helped launch fluoride into the water systems that 62% of Americans now drink. Research shows a much greater difference in cavity rates between poor and nonpoor children than when fluoridation status is compared (13). And the difference between fluoridated and non-fluoridated decay rates was a mere 6/10’s of one tooth surface (there are 128). Yet dentists routinely promise up to a 70% reduction in tooth decay for children who drink fluoridated water.

The poorest oral health in the US is found among non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians and Alaska Natives(7). However, many of these populations already live in fluoridated communities according to the US census and US fluoridation census. And not so coincidentally, these are the same groups that eat the least vegetables, consume the most sugar and have the poorest overall health, according to government statistics.

“Bleeding gums, impacted teeth and rotting teeth are routine matters for the children I have interviewed in the South Bronx (one of the US poorest areas),” writes Jonathan Kozol in 'Savage Inequalities.' Children get used to feeling constant pain...I have seen children in New York (City) with teeth that look like brownish, broken sticks. I have also seen teen-agers who were missing half their teeth. But to me, most shocking is to see a child with an abscess that has been inflamed for weeks and that he has simply lived with and accepts as part of the routine of life.”

New York City has been fluoridated since 1965. Kozol’s book was published in 1991.

Today, researchers recommend children cut back on fluoride(15). However, that message rarely reaches parents. And it’s not unusual for dentists to instigate legislation to force more fluoride on children even when the literature suggests less. Children from Connersville, Indiana, were studied and found to already ingest more than sufficient fluoride through their food, beverages and dental products(15). Nonetheless, dentists still successfully lobbied trusting town legislators to fluoridate Connersville water supply increasing children’s dental fluorosis risk unnecessarily. (“Indiana Vote Focuses on Fluoridation, “Associated Press 10-31-1999 & “Indiana Town OKs Fluoridated Water,” AP, 2-28-00).

This happens often all over the US while 80 percent of the poorest youngsters do not receive dental care. One major reason is that dentists refuse to treat poor children because they aren’t paid enough to do so. Half of Medicaid-insured children never visit a dentist, and many who do are not given needed care(16)

The World Health Organization ranks the US 24th in healthy life expectancy because of the “miserable standards among the US poor” (NY Newsday, 6/5/2000). Over 11% of US poor children go hungry most days (17). The most cavity prone populations are also the least healthiest. Malnutrition has been associated with Early Childhood Caries (ECC)(18) or severely decayed primary dentition. ECC is currently at epidemic proportions in some US minority populations (19).

A well nourished child who gets proper dental treatment will most probably have sound teeth and the only side effect will be a sound body, too. Fluoride is not the cure for tooth decay it was expected to be. An August 1995 Journal of the American Dental Association article reported "Recent studies have identified that the incidence of dental caries among U.S. children seems to be concentrated in about 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. child population - despite access to fluoride and other preventive measures."(19a)

Dental researcher and Professor, Brian Burt, BDS, University of Michigan reported to the NIH panel in March 2001, “...avoiding consumption of excess sugar is a justifiable part of caries prevention, if not the most crucial aspect.”

It’s time to stop throwing more fluoride at children - especially since the silicofluorides most used for fluoridation have never been safety tested (sodium fluoride was used in experiments). Silicofluorides also deliver trace amounts of arsenic, mercury, lead and more along with the fluoride. Recent research by Masters, et al,(20) show that children who live in silicofluoridated communities have higher blood lead levels than children who live in non- or sodium fluoridated communities. Other studies show that high blood lead levels are associated with more tooth decay (21).

Ingested fluoride supplements aren’t the answer either since fluoride’s alleged beneficial properties are mostly topical (22) and because optimal fluoride intake was never proved scientifically (23).

Instead of spending millions of dollars funding researchers to determine just how much fluoride is too much and what kind should or should not be in the water, that money should go to feed the hungry and treat the dental disease of poor children.

Tooth decay appears to be, not a disease of the fluoride deficient, but a disease of the poor, undernourished and dentally undertreated.

END

References:

1) “Benefits and Risks of Water Fluoridation: An Update of the 1996 Federal-Provincial Sub-committee Report,” Public Health Branch, Ontario Ministry of Health, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Health Canada, by Dr David Locker, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Toronto, November 1999 and releases January 2001,http://www.gov.on.ca/MOH/english/pub/ministry/fluoridation/fluoridation.html

3) National Institutes of Health, Consensus Development Conference Statement, Diagnosis and Management of Dental Caries Throughout Life, March 26-28, 2001,http://odp.od.nih.gov/consensus/cons/115/115_intro.htm

4) a) “Caries trends 1992-1998 in two low-fluoride Finnish towns formerly with and without fluoridation,” Caries Research, Nov-Dec 2000 b) “Caries prevalence after cessation of water fluoridation in LaSalud, Cuba,” Caries Research Jan- Feb. 2000 c) “Decline of caries prevalence after the cessation of water fluoridation in the former East Germany,” Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, October 2000 d) “The effects of a break in water fluoridation on the development of dental caries and fluorosis,” Journal of Dental Research, Feb. 2000 e) “Patterns of dental caries following the cessation of water fluoridation,” Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, February 2001 f) “Caries experience of 15-year-old children in The Netherlands after discontinuation of water fluoridation,” Caries Research, 1993